FISHERY News

Hello everyone,

A new build has been uploaded. There were not a lot of super fancy modifications done to it this week. The usual batch of non critical bug fixes and some small quality of life changes to powered items.



Part of this UI was reorganised to make things less confusing. Instead of the slider being attached to the power attribute it has been separated into it's own strength attribute and the power usage and in this case the Oxygen output update as they did before but now things are more neat.

Auto mode is now optional. There is a checkbox to toggle it. By default auto mode is turned off which means the device is turned on all the time as long as there is enough power. But when Auto mode is enabled the min and max thresholds are preset to something useful depending on the function of the item. For instance this air stone is outputting Oxygen so we have made the min and max thresholds correspond to what would be useful to keep fish happy. The same is done for Co2, in which case the thresholds are set to keep plants happy and not be toxic to fish. The same changes apply to all powered plumbing items too.

Additions to ingame help:


A larger batch of help subjects have been added. All the main water chemistry components now have some explanation. Algae, Co2, Oxygen, Nutrients, Power, Salinity, Temperature and Waste. The purpose of these texts is to give players some instruction as to what use each component has in an aquarium. They refer to some of the important quantities that players need to know about. For instance in this example it mentions that when nutrients levels get to around 85% there is a high chance that Algae will start to grow. It is not meant to be a tutorial but we want it to function as a reference guide that players can refer to when they need to know something. It will eventually cover pretty much everything in the game. We will keep adding to it every week.

The main reason why the changes to the build are a little light this week is because we have been hard at work on making lots of new content.

Red Terror Cichlid:


Finally we are replacing the googly eyed red terror cichlid with something that resembles the current version of the game's art style. This one is the male variant of the model. The females are not too different in terms of model shape except there are differences in the length of their dorsal and anal fins. Their sizes are quite different also. For sure there will be a lot of last minute tweaking to be done before it goes into painting.

Red Terror Cichlid Silhouette:


The most important aspect for making 3d models or any kind of sculpture in general is the silhouette. Hopefully anyone who knows anything about cichlids would recognise this as some kind of cichlid after viewing it for half a second. In a game where there will be so many fish species added it is very important to make each type of fish distinctive in this way.

Amazon Puffer:


Ah yes the lovely little Colomesus Asellus otherwise known as the Amazon puffer. This was promised to someone on the forums and one must try to keep ones promises. Apparently it is quite difficult to determine the sex of these puffer fish so we will only add some subtle differences to the male and female models but most differences will be in the paint job.

Hawaiian Whitespotted Toby:


Another puffer fish. Canthigaster Jactator, commonly called the Hawaiian Whitespotted Toby, is a marine puffer fish. We don't really have any marine fish in the game yet and this gorgeous fish had to be modelled once I saw it.

You may have noticed there are no pictures of our puffers all puffed up. When we add them to the game they will most likely have that ability. You might have noticed in recent updates to the game that each fish has a stress response detailed in their info. The actual code for stress responses is still being worked on and the stress response for puffer fish is to inflate themselves. We will try our best to get that into the game this month with all the content we are working on but if we don't get it into the game this month then it will be added in January for sure.

The special fish I teased you all with last week has been modelled also but I cannot say anymore about it.

Sponge Filters:


Yes, Sponge filters. These were items that I said I did not want to put into the game because they are ugly but after more research and a lot of thinking about it I am warming to them. They will also play a important role in the game when we add story mode and players are concerned about the budget of their aquariums. Sponge filters are relatively cheap but useful and anyone who gets into keeping aquariums usually has some experience with them so I thought why not. Their size relative to each other will change somewhat. They will be scaled to better represent small, medium and large.

There are going to be some very interesting things revealed next week so be sure to come back and check that out.

We hope you all have a great weekend,

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

It has been a very productive week indeed and we have uploaded a new build!



A new fish behaviour has been added. "Algae Nibble". Someone on the forums earlier in the week spoke about the need to keep algae under control so we added a dissolvable tablet into the game that reduces algae chemically. But that is slightly boring and crude way to reduce algae so we also added the ability for all fish to eat algae off of the substrate and decorations. Not all fish in real life do eat algae of course but we will turn off this behaviour for the Betta fish and a few others when we add some more carnivore specific behaviours into the game. The gif is very brief but you should be able to see the little fellow take a little bite. This is still only the first version of this behaviour so expect any imperfections that you see to go away over time. A small entry has been made in the in-game help for algae also.



Finally we got around to re-organising the options screen. There are quite a few options we are going to be adding in the near future which required more space to be free in the UI to fit it all. You should be able to see in the above image that we have added the options to switch between centimetres and inches, litres and gallons, Celsius and fahrenheit. Yes I have just noticed that Celsius is spelt wrong in the ui. Well done us.



We have also added the dimensions and volumes of the current aquarium to the main stats ui. Some of you may have noticed in the recent updates that medicine, tablets and fish population requirements take into account the volume of the aquarium they are to be placed into. For instance the Rummy nose tetra likes a population of around 22 fish per 16 gallons. So if you have a 32 gallon aquarium then you can expect that these fish will like no more than 44 fish in that aquarium before they become socially uncomfortable. For players to make quick calculations about these sorts of things they need to see how big their aquarium is.

there have also been quite a few small bug fixes and tweaks. From a UI displaying an incorrect value to fish energy going beyond 100% after they eat. Small things that don't crash the game but make things feel even more early access that we would like it to. We also fixed an annoying UI bug that an eagle eyed player pointed out to us on the forums.



We got sick and tired of that old loading screen and replaced it with a nice new one. We also updated the whole steam page with a new images, text, trailer etc. It has been over a year since we actually updated the steam page. That means most people who see the steam page for the first time think all the fish have googly eyes and have no idea that there is a plumbing system and more than 5 fish in total. Updating this is not really important to anyone who has already purchased the game of course but it is good to freshen up everything every once in a while.

It also reminds us how much faith has been put into us by players who saw that old steam page and judged it was worthy of their time and money. That is certainly something we won't forget and the best thing we can do is keep working on the game until it is as perfect as we can make it.

December is going to be a busy month. We have those new puffer fish to add as well as replace the last of the googly eyed fish, the red terror cichlid. There is also a special fish that we want to add for Christmas time but I shall say no more about it until we add it. There are also some new backdrops finally coming into the game. New plants, new decorations. December is content month for sure.

We shall see you all next week with a nice shiny new build.

Have a great weekend,

The Fishery Team

Hello everyone,

We have uploaded a new build. Yes. we are surprised too. We had a bit of a shorter week this week. After finally uploading a build on Monday evening we took Tuesday off to recover then spent the remaining days fixing some minor bugs and making some nice changes.

Algae and Waste:




Algae and waste visualisations have been modified. Algae now grows on the glass. This will be very useful for when we add some suckermouth catfish and other algae eaters.

Waste:


The textures of for waste visualisation have been repainted. Getting the exact right shade of brown that works well on all objects is quite tricky. As is determining how much should be covered up by the waste.

We also added back the floating algae and waste particles into the water. These slowed down the game quite a lot when we tried it many months ago so we are taking baby steps and using very simple looking particles with very simple shaders and will keep updating them little by little until everything looks nice and is fast.

help:


The help system has been changed to utilise more screen space so things don't feel so cramped. I hate scrolling through menus in games just so i can find out why something is not working. We removed the old in-game help menu and replaced it with some panels for each subject. When players enter help mode via the bottom menu they can then choose from a selection of subjects in a manner similar to other menus in the game.

Hopefully this way of doing things will be clearer. We can use the whole screen if needed and there are no other UI panels visible to distract your eyes. The subjects are displayed in alphabetical order and we will be expanding them more every week. We would have liked to add some new ones this week but it was a shorter week and we just did not have time.

The next subjects that we will add to the help will talk about the changes to the simulation system that were made in the last week. I saw on the forums someone was having trouble understanding what is going on in the new version which just tells us we have to hurry up with putting useful information into the help system.

There were a few other nice tweaks that were made this week. All the fish have now been scaled to match their approximate real world size. Their swimming speeds are also related to their size so not all fish swim at approximately the same speed. Their size is also taken into account when they shoal together so they don't all bunch up into a small space.

Some upcoming changes that will be made to fish will also included slightly more stricter rules about population. The rule of "One inch of fish equals one gallon of water" is going to be put into the game. That means if players want to have a 60 litre/16 gallon aquarium they can't fill it with 50 neon tetras and expect them all to be happy. At most you would expect to fit around 13 of them. Or at least that is what the person at the aquarium store might advise you.

This may seem to some that we are artificially trying to add more obstacles or just trying to make player's lives more difficult. Fishery is missing a lot of structure in many areas and how aquariums are stocked is an important part of keeping fish in real life. To be clear, the game will not prevent players from over stocking their aquariums but the fish may become stressed. At least that is the plan. We will probably tweak the the numbers to be more forgiving if it takes too much fun out of the game. These changes will probably enter the game in early December.

Next week will be a full week and there is much to do so we shall have a rest tonight and make lots of notes. We also expect to be uploading a new build next Friday so keep an eye out for that.

We wish you all a great weekend.

The Fishery Team.

Hello everyone,

The game build has been updated!

There is a lot to talk about so I will get right to it.


- The entire UI has been reorganised again to reduce clutter and make things less busy. We are also preparing to add UI for more features that are upcoming.


- settings for selections and manipulation have been tucked away more neatly.


- Water chemistry data is now placed at the top of the screen which is where most people expect to see it and it is visible while in plumbing mode
- Data showing the number of fish, plants, medicines etc have also been placed at the top of the screen. Their lists have been disabled for the time being because they are in the process of being redesigned to actually show useful information.


- The escape menu has been expanded to hold more functionality than before and buttons like the options, load, save buttons have been placed in their menu and not cluttering the screen anymore.
- In the next update the game will actually pause when this menu is shown.


- first version of the breeding system has been added. All fish breed in the same way for now. They all lay eggs. We have tweaked the numbers so they hopefully wont breed out of control.


- The selection uis of all objects have been modified to look nicer and show better information in a more clear manner.
- plants and fish now have a stress parameter. This is preparing for a "Stress response" feature where a fish or plant's behaviour might change when under a lot of stress.


- creation options for the shop/inventory have been better placed and simplified. They also have some quick help text that appears when players put their mouse of the name of each parameter.
- The creation placement brush has had it's best bits merged with the new and improved placement tool. A new brush tool that works way better will return to the game in the future.


- more particle fx have been added to plumbing objects help give them more life when they are turned on. Though it will be vastly improved.


- The way that algae is calculated has been modified to accommodate the new simulation system. There are still changes that need to be made the how it is visualised. Algae will grow on parts of the glass and we will bring back floating algae particles. Algae will also be a food source in the near future for some new fish we will add as well as some of the current ones.


- players can now add salt into the water. Alas there are not really any saltwater fish or corals in the game yet but they are coming very soon.


- when players choose aquariums they can now see the dimensions as cm or inches and volume as litres or gallons. however the button in the options to switch between them wont be added until later this week.


- Plumbing connectors have little arrows painted onto them. They are meant to look like someone drew them on with marker pen. We have been inspired by a lot of images and videos made by people on the internet who have made plumbing related systems out of household items. People breeding brine shrimp in old coke bottles, algae reactors in old kettles etc. We quite like the mad scientist vibe that we get when looking at their stuff and want to incorporate some of that in various plumbing items. It also makes things look a little more personal.


- pre selection UIs for plumbing objects show less information but it is more informative than just saying "connected".


- Selection UIs for plumbing objects have also been updated and all items that use electricity have the auto enable feature assigned to them.


There are a countless number of code tweaks which have reduced memory usage per item added to the aquarium. We have done our best to reduce how much code needs to execute in order to update everything.

All the new fish we have shown in previous posts have been added to the game. Along with a lot of the other features and tweaks that were talked about. New Co2 and oxygen regulators have been added to the plumbing system. The new versions of the nutrient injector and algae reactor have not been added. There are some more tweaks that need to be made before we are happy. There are a lot of plumbing items still to come. Different types of filters that come in different sizes. For larger aquariums it would not make sense to chain together lots of small filters but rather use a larger more fancy filter that gets the job done.

There are of course a few rough edges to this update. The breeding behaviour is still not quite right. The fish are meant to swim around each other in a sort of poetic way. This kind of works when there is a moderate size difference between the partners but if they are near the same size they sort of just face each other like they are kissing which is quite funny but not what we have intended.

I still need to add controls to the options menu that allows players to decide how they want their units displayed. cm, inches, gallons, litres, etc.

The data that displays for each fish in their info tab is not unique for each fish yet. I just need to update the data files with all the correct information about their size, care level, temperament etc. We also need to double check all the information to make sure that the sizes and water conditions are correct.

This update took so long because we decided to fix and implement an enormous chunk of our to-do list that has grown after the past year. As usually happens with programming fixing one problem requires fixing another and another and another.

This coming Friday there will be another post which talks about anything that I forgot to talk about in this post and more of the other things we are working on. Now that we can make saltwater aquariums we must add some things that actually require saltwater. That means soon we will add some coral and I promised someone on the forums that the first saltwater fish we add is a type of puffer fish so I better get started on that.

We should also be able to do another update to the build this Friday. There is still some work that needs to be done that I just could not squeeze into this update. Updating the in-game help with new images, fixing a few small ui bugs. They are not crash bugs. just things that don't always display the correct numbers and of course the usual tweaks to AI, shaders, etc

I'll spend some extra time on the forums this week replying to any posts that I have missed because we were too busy trying to get this update out. All questions shall be answered.

Thank you all for your patience and we shall update you with more progress very very soon.

The Fishery team.

Hello everyone,

There is something of a disaster about this week's post I am sorry to say. We have been burning the candle at both ends for a few weeks in preparation for getting this game update onto steam but it appears we have reached our limit.

The update is not cancelled at all. We are merely too tired to continue today. The plan is to sleep for the rest of today and wake up tomorrow refreshed and ready to continue.

There are only a handful of things still left to do. These include tweaks to fish AI especially where breeding is concerned, a handful of small UI changes, a few hours of rigorous testing and fixing problems found and rewriting parts of the in-game help. Essentially it is the final cherry on top parts of the update.

It is always embarrassing to show our failings to the wider world but in the interest of transparency it is far better to keep you all informed about what is happening rather than staying quiet.

The update will go on steam within a very small number of days and then I'll spend most of this coming Friday writing a gigantic news post here that details every change we have made for this update. It is by far the most number of changes we have made in a single update thus far.

Apologies for any and all disappointment this will have caused. We shall make it right.


The Fishery Team